As I wrote in the initial post, mapping out minutes for each player in the middle of July, four months before the season starts, and when we have very little to no information on most of the roster seems kind of pointless.
But as I thought might happen, over 200 of you are depraved enough in your Marquette condition to join me in this fruitless “endeavor” for which I am very grateful. Because this isn’t meant to be a foolproof, lock-it-in prediction, it’s more a baseline of what role you think each player will have on this year’s team.
And to be perfectly honest, I’m extremely shocked both at how seriously you all took it, and how similar to my predictions the results were.
Here’s the breakout by player per the popular vote.
And here is how I projected the minutes to shake out.
The only players on which I was off form the #Mubb consensus were freshman Damarius Owens, who I had at 12 and the vote had between 6-10 minutes, and Caedin Hamilton, who I had at 7 vs the 11-15 he finished at. So not even that far off. With the loss of 2 stalwarts in Kolek and Ighodaro, each averaging 30+ minutes, I definitely expected more divergence.
Let’s dive into each player. I’ve bucketed the minute chunks into names and also added the most recent comparison at that minute amount as a barometer for what to expect.
Kam Jones – Star, 31-35 min (Tyler Kolek 2024)
It’s no secret this is going to be his team.
So it’s no surprise that over 83% of respondents projected Kam to get 31+ minutes, the most on the team by a significant margin. He’s averaged 29+ minutes per game both of the past 2 seasons, so taking a small to modest bump seems logical.
The 67% of people selecting 31-35 minutes for Kam was the most common response by over 6 full points, so this is the most confident the MU consensus is collectively. To the person who thinks he’s only playing 1-5 minutes… good luck with that.
Stevie Mitchell – Starter, 26-30 min (Stevie Mitchell 2024)
Stevie’s distribution of votes was pretty tight between the starter and star level, but 26-30 ultimately won out.
Stevie averaged 26.3 minutes a game last season, so it looks like the consensus is for him to stay in that range this season once more.
David Joplin – Starter, 26-30 min (David Joplin 2024)
Joplin’s vote tally for 26-30 minutes was the 2nd most common response among all players, as 60.9% of respondents believe he’ll once again finish averaging 26-30 minutes a game, like last season’s 27.7.
Personally, I think the added wing depth will mean a slight crunch in playing time, with Joplin sliding into the 5 for a few minutes each half. But there’s no doubt he will be a starter for the 2nd consecutive year.
Chase Ross – Starter, 26-30 min (Kam Jones 2024)
Chase’s injuries limited the guard from Texas in his sophomore season, but he still managed to play 21.8 minutes a game. For his junior season, the consensus has him vaulting from a rotation player to a full fledged starter, topping 26 minutes a game.
Ross’ ability to score at the rim decreased, strangely enough, a fact which we’ll dive more in depth later this summer, as it’s very uncommon. Still, as a holder of immense amounts of Ross stock, I’m very bullish on Chase being able to bring more offense to his elite-level defense.
Ben Gold – Rotation, 21-25 min (Chase Ross 2024)
Ben’s vote tally between the first and second most popular responses was the closes of all players, a fact even more incredible when you see that those two buckets composed 82.8% of responses. Ultimately, a majority believes that though Gold will see a bump from his 16.8 minutes last season, it won’t quite be to the 26+ the other 4 projected starters have.
And speaking of starters, this is where I’ll note the 5 returning players already examined above all had their top 2 vote selections surpass 80% of respondents, something no other remaining player was able to come close to. This tells us there is very little question as to both who the starters will be and how much they will play.
Sean Jones – Redshirt, 0 min (Caedin Hamilton 2024)
Sean’s projection was quite difficult as it required voters to see into his health future and determine whether 1) he was healthy enough to play, and 2) if so, what level of impact would he have after such a long recovery from a major procedure.
The result was the largest disparity of answers from all players, with 34% of votes going to a full redshirt season of no play, with 17% selecting 21-25. In my own tally, I took the easy route and had him at 0 minutes based off his comments in March that he still had 8-9 months of recovery, and the idea that catching up after a year off the court for a player reliant on athleticism was too big an ask.
Tre Norman – Role Player, 16-20 min (Ben Gold 2024)
Tre seems to have the biggest opportunity for a possible jump in playing time, with Kolek leaving, if he shows he can play as a primary ball handler for extended stretches. However, the consensus has him going from 9 minutes a game to 16-20 next season.
I’ll also note Norman received the most 31-35 minute votes outside of the starting 5, so clearly there are some who do believe the rising sophomore is primed for a breakout.
Al Amadou – DevOp, 1-5 min (Al Amadou 2024)
We don’t have a lot of data on Amadou, who only averaged 3.7 minutes in the 14 games he played, but it seems the majority still see him as mostly an end of game type player, closing out cupcakes and blowouts.
Just over 1/4 of respondents think he’ll take a leap into 11+ minutes this season.
Zaide Lowery – Role Player, 16-20 min (Ben Gold 2024)
Zaide led all freshmen in minutes per game last season, averaging 9.7, and like Tre, the consensus seems to be on Lowery jumping into that 16-20 minute role player bucket.
The 11-15 minute bucket did make up 36% of responses, so there is a significant fraction that don’t quite have him as a regular, with his range of outcomes from 1-5 minutes all the way to 31-35.
(This might be a good time to plug this great look at Zaide as he started featuring more regularly in January.)
Caedin Hamilton – Bench, 11-15 (Sean Jones 2023)
If I had sent this survey out 2 weeks ago, I don’t think we would have seen this distribution of results. A lightly regarded, late-signing recruit who sat out all of 2024 redshirting, it’s not like he’s a known commodity.
But with the dearth of proven bigs and these comments from Shaka, it makes sense to see the results the way they are.
This Caedin report was actually the impetus for the survey. I want to measure intel-less expectation.
Damarius Owens – Deep Bench (6-10, Tre Norman 2024)
Our first true freshman shows up about where most true freshmen end up, in the deep bench, playing spot minutes irregularly. The consensus has him averaging 6-10 minutes, though not by a landslide or anything. Damarius was the only player to have 30+ votes at 4 different buckets. Which is to say, we’re all guessing.
And this is where I’ll announce to the world my apologies for claiming a stake on Owens island before we have even seen a 4 second clip on social. I’m all-in on the wing after seeing him in person. And yes, I know how extremely foolish it is to extrapolate 1 meaningless regular season game at the high school game into high major expectations on a top-25 team. I try very hard to keep my public comments tempered.
But having seen players like Deonte Burton live, even against outmatched opposition, there’s a wow factor that doesn’t translate to highlight videos. I “only” have him at 12 minutes in my official log, but I will not be surprised if he ends up closer to 20 this season.
For more background and a few clips, here’s a scouting report from earlier this year.
Royce Parham – DevOp, 1-5min (Al Amadou 2024)
Parham’s 1-5 minutes a game vote was the 5th largest tally, which surprised me quite a bit, as I usually expect a wider distribution for freshmen.
But I can’t say I disagree, as Parham, though he’s an offensive talent that will be a scoring force later in his career, isn’t quite ready to play the 5, in my opinion, and has steep competition for a wing spot behind Jop, Zaide, Chase and Damarius who all can play the 3/4.
Conclusion
I so appreciate everyone who participated, as this is what makes Marquette’s fanbase special. It looks like we will get a chance to see the players ourselves in early August, so will use this as a barometer shortly.
Once more, this isn’t intended to be a firm prediction of what will be, just an exercise of what the consensus from Marquette’s most online fans currently is.
I can’t wait to be proven wrong one way or another.
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